Kusunoki Kasuga
|Manga Debut = Chapter 18 |Anime Debut = Episode 13.0 |Status = Alive |Aliases = Mai High's Sapphire Princess }} is the successor to the Ancient Martial Art Kasuga-Style Life and Death Technique and also the only member of the Women's Martial Arts Club at Maijima Private High School. She is the fifth capture target in the series. Personality Kusunoki is an upperclassman at Maijima High who is well respected for both her beauty and strength. Beneath her tough exterior as a young woman who has lived her entire life attempting to live up to expectations as the successor to a martial arts dojo lies a teenage girl who is actually attracted to and enjoys cute and feminine things. Because of the fundamental dissonance between these two sides of her personality, Kusunoki chose to deny the feminine part of her personality and entirely embrace the martial arts side of her life. Despite this, it was shown that she still have a soft spot for cute things. Aside from this, she is also shown to have the utmost respect for her capricious elder sister, Hinoki Kasuga, who is a fashion designer (along with a couple other jobs) that ran away to America. After her experiences with Keima, she is still shown to value martial arts, but has interspersed her life with the recurring cat from her arc, in addition to more feminine things, like placing a houseplant in the dojo. As a result, this improves the amount of respect she receives from her invariably male disciples at the dojo. Hinoki said that she was a cry-baby when she was young, possibly suggesting that Kunsonoki was meek and gentle before. Appearance Kusunoki has brown hair and eyes and long, flowing hair. She had two hair bands at her two sides of her front hair. She was also quite renowned for her beauty as she was one of the candidates to be placed in the Mai-high Princess and Princes competition. In the past, Kusunoki wears a normal shirt and a normal skirt. Now, the only clothing she wears is either her school uniform or her martial arts uniform. Though she is shown to wear a track suit and Elsie's dress. Abilities Being the heir to her dojo, Kusunoki was trained in martial arts at a very young age alongside her sister, Hinoki. She was seen to be extremely quick and powerful. She was able to quickly get behind her opponent and attack them. However, in the past, due to Kusunoki's more meek attitude, she could not defeat her sister. When Hinoki left, Kusunoki made her resolve to inherit the dojo and begin to train more often. As a result, by the time Hinoki returned, Kusunoki's skills had surpassed her sister's. Kusonoki's physical prowess is large, being able to punch through several tiles with one arm.Chapter 19, page 3 Background In the past, Kusunoki and Hinoki were always together in the dojo. The sisters would always train and had fun together and Hinoki would be the one who does things while Kusunoki would follow her sister. However, when Hinoki left, Kusunoki was heartbroken but she still had to accept her father's wish and thus, she trained herself even more to be the successor of the Kasuga Dojo. She would eventually be so strong that even adults of high rank could not defeat her. However, Kusunoki still likes cute and girly things but being the dojo's successor, she could not bring herself to accept such things. She would believe that cute and girly things are a symbol of weakness and that she can only follow one road and sacrifice the other. In the end, Kusunoki decided to abandon all of her affections for cute things and began to reject them. Character History Kusunoki Kasuga Arc After rescuing Keima from the school delinquents, as Keima tries to walks away, Kusunoki complains to Keima that he is a male and is supposed to be able to save himself. Elsie appears, trying but failing to help Keima, she said that they were weak and she does not want to see them again. As she heads to her own classroom, Elsie's sensor went off, this was the first sign that she has a spirit inside of her body. When she arrived in her classroom she went to the balcony after seeing a cute cat. After scaring away the cat, a piece of paper flew at her. Grabbing the paper, she sees a drawing and found it to be cute. Later, Keima and Elsie observes Kusunoki practicing martial arts in the gymnasium. Despite Elsie telling Keima that it might be difficult for Keima to interact with Kusunoki, he decides to confront Kusunoki directly by asking to be her student. After some persuading by Keima, Kusunoki accepted him as her student, though officially he is known only as the manager of the women's martial arts club. One day, while she was changing her clothes in the gym locker room, she sees the same cat from before. Failing to chase away the cat this time, she was found hugging the cat when Keima entered the locker room after cleaning the gym. Surprised and angry that Keima discovered this side of her, she hits Keima and pushes him out of the room. Kusunoki then runs to the balcony with the intention of getting rid of the cat by literally throwing it into the air. However, the spiritual manifestation of her feminine self appeared at the last moment and saved the cat, much to the surprise of Keima and Elsie who were spying on Kusunoki in Elsie's magic cloth. Keima tells Kusunoki that he believes that her feminine spiritual manifestation will appear when she is exposed to cute things and that she should defeat it. Elsie suggested that they should go on a date, causing the spiritual manifestation to temporarily appear. A day later, at Maijima Wai Wai Road, Kusunoki, dressed in a beautiful dress made by Elsie, feeling embarrassed that everyone is staring at her. Keima brings her to a video game store. Kusunoki on the other hand brings him to a sports store. They felt that they cannot connect with each other this way and decided to go to a game center where they challenged each other to a semi-physical game. Kusunoki becomes infuriated with Keima when he wins over her in a whack-a-lobster game, due to her competitive nature. Later, they went to the movies and Dezinisea Land. Towards the evening they went to the Night Public Park. However, despite all their efforts, they did not seem to be making much progress. Refusing to give up, Kusunoki eventually found a way to make the spiritual manifestation appear and challenged it to a fight. During the fight, Kusunoki found out that it was not as weak as she assumed, and she had trouble defeating it. To Kusunoki's anger, Keima advised her to learn to accept the part of her that likes cute things instead of trying to defeat it by fighting. After some arguing, both the manifestation and Kusunoki was convinced by Keima to accept each other. The manifestation then went into Kusunoki's body and tries to force a kiss with Keima by controlling Kusunoki's body. Kusunoki and Keima both struggled to avoid the kiss, while the manifestation inside Kusunoki asks if she hates Keima. Realizing that she has fallen in love with Keima, Kusunoki allows the kiss, expelling the spirit from her body. After this, Kusunoki can be seen carrying a cute cat in her arm, while still believing in being strong. Godzilla Sister Arc Kusunoki reappears later when her freelancing older sister, Hinoki, reappears in town, and is revealed to have an escaped spirit within her heart. She plays a critical role in expelling the spirit, since the gap in Hinoki's heart was created primarily by her desire to maintain a facade as a superior and good older sister. Despite having forgotten about her own conquest (having had her memories modified as shoddily as Mio's), and Keima confirming that there is no Goddess within her, like most other conquests, she continues to display an element of attraction to Keima. Old Conquest Arc Although not officially shown, Kusunoki's photo was seen as one of the candidates for the Mai-High Pre Pre competition. Mai-High Festival Arc Kusunoki was confirmed to be captured by Vintage and was about to be killed by Lune but was saved for a while when Lune's superior called in. Later, due to the events and actions of Keima, Runaway Spirit Squad and the goddesses, she along with the other captured targets were freed. Kusunoki was later shown to be in the festival as her disciples surrounds her trying to offer her food. Relationships Keima Katsuragi Originally she saw Keima as a worthless, weak individual, but later became attracted to him, even being made to go out on a date that her feminine side confessed to have enjoyed. However, since her memories were reformatted, she still recognizes Keima as the one who joined the Women's Martial Arts Club at Maijima for a short while, but other than an inexplicable reaction to seeing soft-serve ice cream, she does not seem to remember being conquered by him. Nevertheless, during the Hinoki arc, she displays elements of jealousy whenever Hinoki and Keima interact. Hinoki Kasuga She has the utmost respect for her older sister, referring to her as "Ane-ue." When she was a small child, she was surprisingly timid and looked up to her talented older sister, Hinoki, who looked out for Kusunoki whenever she could. She genuinely loves her older sister and tries to convince her to stay at home forever, but Hinoki vanishes off to pursue her own dreams. Shown in Hinoki's 4-koma, Kusunoki has so much respect, or maybe fear, for her older sister that she would do any requests she asks. The Cat The stray cat is a recurring minor character in Kusunoki's arc that she views as a symbol of all the weak, feminine things in her heart. Although she attempted to remove the cat from her life by throwing it from an upper level floor of the school, she is shown to actually like the cat and eventually takes it in as her own. Others The students at her dojo (who are all hulking, muscular martial arts practitioners) apparently have the utmost respect for her, despite her being not only female but probably younger than all of them. Nevertheless, they seem to show some concern for her complete devotion to martial arts and are correspondingly delighted when she does such things as place a houseplant in the dojo, exclaiming that she has finally killed someone. However, they are also rather perverted towards her at times shown when they all support the idea of Hinoki advertising the dojo by putting up a poster, wherein Kusunoki is dressed up in a revealing bikini. In the anime, after her capture it appears that she has some female students in school now. Trivia * literally means ' '. Her given name comes from Kusu Station (楠駅, Kusu-eki), and her surname comes from the . * Kusunoki is known for having the title of "Mai High Sapphire Princess". This might be come from "Prince Sapphire" from Princess Knight. *An omake reveals the following: ** She likes strong things, hard-baked senbei (rice crackers), and cute things. ** She dislikes weak things and brown sugar senbei. ** Her recent trouble is giving a cute name to the cat in her dojo. **Kusunoki can't refuse Hinoki's requests. For example, Hinoki called once and told Kusunoki to bring some rice-balls all the way to America. Another time, Hinoki commanded that Kusunoki must confess to Keima within 10 seconds. In both cases, she actually attempted to carry out these orders. **Kusunoki was based on Mishado Shinohara, the mother of Yūki (Yūki being the protagonist in Seikesshō Albatross). Quotes * (To the Delinquents) "Attacking a defenseless person...That's not something a real man would do!!" Season 2 Episode 1; Chapter 18, p.6 * (To Keima) "You weak looking punk. You give me the creeps, we shall fix that! Especially...fix that face!" ''Chapter 19, p.7 * (To Keima) "''There's no doubt about it, you were the one who was in the girl's karate club before." Chapter 91, p.18 *(Her thoughts) "The strong must defend the weak!" References Navigation Category:Female Characters Category:Maijima Category:Featured Articles Category:Conquest Characters